


Magnum Opus

by seekwill



Series: Provenance [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Art Forgery, Body Worship, Entrapment, Happy Ending?, He/Him Pronouns For Gabriel (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Obsession, Other, POV Beelzebub (Good Omens), POV Gabriel (Good Omens), Panic Attacks, Paris (City), Subterfuge, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), where one person does both the hurting and the comforting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:13:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26274667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekwill/pseuds/seekwill
Summary: Gabriel startled. He’d been staring at the river, descending into his warring daydreams when the lithe figure of Beelzebub had materialized beside him. Breath left him as their mouth curved into a smile. It felt authentic, like they were genuinely pleased to see him. He wanted to trust it.It took less than a second for him to know he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plan to tell them, now, here, that he couldn’t see them again. Their mere presence unmoored him from reality, and brought him closer to them.Gabriel Bote gets wrecked.
Relationships: Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Series: Provenance [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817818
Comments: 27
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to summerofspock for the beta, and to Euny_Sloane and Melibe for being my early readers on this, the (likely) conclusion to the Provenance saga.

Gabriel kept a steady clip as he weaved between commuters and tourists, making his way through St. Pancras station. The vaulted ceiling felt like hallowed ground on his pilgrimage, not to a holy site but to his own personal salvation. He clutched his overnight bag tightly and checked his breast pocket for the hundredth time for his passport. Still there. A talisman to remind him who he was, where he came from.

When he finally settled into his seat on the train, he pulled out his cell phone, checked to see if he had any messages or missed calls from when he’d been on the underground. Nothing. He hadn’t texted them to confirm. Gabriel had never initiated contact with them. They hadn’t contacted him to cancel. So, as far as he knew, this was happening.

He was prepared this time. They wouldn’t be popping in unannounced, through his window or workshop door. There wouldn’t be anything clandestine or illicit about it. He would see them in broad daylight on the street in the middle of Paris. 

And then, he would tell Beelzebub it was over, for good.

* * *

His phone vibrated on the bedside table at 11:00pm, just as he had turned off the lamp. Gabriel muttered to himself and reached over to check the glaring screen. It was still a civilized time in the States and there was the off chance his parents were calling, or his brother, having forgotten the time, though they were all usually more thoughtful about that sort of thing. But the screen read  _ Unknown Number _ . He turned off the vibration, placed the phone face down, and went to sleep.

The same thing happened the following night, and the one after. A phone call from an Unknown Number at 11:00pm sharp. Whoever was calling never left a voicemail.

In all likelihood, it was a spam call. Some con artist trying to get him to download “anti-virus software” or tell him he hadn’t paid his taxes properly. Though, the second time he’d gotten the call, he found his thoughts opening a door he had been trying, and failing, to hold shut.

Beelzebub said they’d be in touch. He wasn’t supposed to hope for it. It had been two months since they had come to him. Two months since he’d been buried inside them last, felt their skin with his hands, laid his head on their shoulder as he descended into panic. Maybe this was them. 

Since he’d been with them last, Gabriel had deteriorated. There was no other way to put it. He was still working, but less, driven to distraction by the vision of Beelzebub on his worktop, legs spread and wailing. During sleepless nights he found himself taking solace in the memory of Beelzebub holding him and smoothing his hair as he fought for breath. He’d press his hand to his chest, trying to mimic the sensation of theirs.

Every bump in the night had him sitting up, hoping they’d decided to visit. Every time the workshop door opened he wanted their small body to be framed there, smiling. Beelzebub Prince was a criminal who had dismantled his decade-and-a-half long career and made a fool of him, and they were the only person he had any desire to lay eyes on.

He told himself it was a spam call, but he hoped it was Beelzebub. This hope kept him from answering the phone at first, too worried about the disappointment that would break his chest open when it inevitably wasn’t them at all. It would be some poor call centre worker in Delhi who’d gotten her time zones wrong and Gabriel would yell to be taken off their call list and then the calls would stop and there would be no 11:00pm hit of bittersweet hopefulness that Beelzebub wasn’t done with him.

He allowed this to continue for five days. Five calls. Five mostly similar fantasies where Beelzebub’s voice would whisper into his ear that they were outside, and could he let them in? Or they could let themself in, they’d have a way, they always would. Then he would resist and they would coax and wheedle and beguile, and he would simply have no choice but to do what they wanted.

If he pretended he didn’t want this, not really, then he could excuse himself. But even he could feel the weight of his own self-delusion.

On the night of the fifth call he waited for the phone to ring at 11:00pm, holding it above his face as he lay in bed, watched the minutes tick by until the inevitable vibration. As the clock struck and the call came, Gabriel took a deep breath, and swiped the screen to answer. He wanted it to be Beelzebub. It would be spam, or a fax line, or something else.

He held the phone to his ear. “Hello,” he said, the crack in his voice inspiring a flash of humiliation.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" asked Beelzebub with no concern, clearly not caring if they had woken him up, perhaps intending to.

Gabriel exhaled, and covered his face with his hand, breath hot into his palm. It had been them. It had almost certainly been them for the past five nights, just waiting for him to pick up. His heart began to beat faster, and he shifted his quilt off him, suddenly warmer.

His tongue darted out to wet his lips and he stifled a groan. Or a moan. A laugh or a cry. Something that would give him away in a second. He knew beyond that, he had so little control now, over what he would say, so deep had their talons sunk into him.

“Almost, but no. No,” he said, then cleared his throat. Then it occurred to him to ask, “How did you get-”

Anticipating his question, Beelzebub chuckled, low and throaty directly into his ear. “Your number? Detective, it’s on your website.”

They thought he was silly.  _ He _ thought he was silly. “Oh, right.”

There was a protracted silence, where neither spoke. He knew they were still there, could hear the whisper of their breathing. He wondered where they were. London? Russia? Continental Europe? He’d never actually figured out where they lived while they were working, suspecting them a nomad who stayed wherever the work was and moving on immediately after. 

Was it night where they were? Did they stare into a dark room? Were they lying in bed, smiling in relief that he’d finally picked up?

“Why are you calling?” he asked, at the same time Beelzebub asked, “How are you?”

He choked. How loaded a question, impossible to answer with any sort of honesty without performing an autopsy of his fractured psyche.  _ I am the happiest I have been in two months, which is the amount of time it’s been since I kissed you last. I am devastated to admit that. I am exhausted because dreams of you have taken over my nights and my waking hours. I am made of fury at how quickly and efficiently you dismantle me. I love you. _

“I wanted to see how you were,” said Beelzebub, the sincerity in their voice startling him. “Last time I saw you, you were troubled.”

He laughed but it caught in his throat, came out as a hiccup. Troubled was one way to put it. He’d been left in pieces by their last visit, and then again days after, when they’d revealed themself with the dead fly in the envelope. 

“Was the Sutherland yours?” he asked before he could stop himself, the words rushing together.

“No,” they responded immediately. “It belongs to an associate. I merely made the recommendation of a restorer.”

Part of him wanted to be grateful that they hadn’t tried to change the subject, the other part couldn’t tell if they were telling the truth. They’d always had an intimate relationship with falsehoods.

He swallowed. “Was it stolen?”

“Of course it wasn’t stolen, Gabriel. Don’t be ridiculous.” They sounded offended. It turned him over inside, this wanting so badly to believe them, knowing that it would be a mistake. “Like I said, it belongs to a friend.”

Associate, friend. A split personality? He knew not what to believe.

“The restoration was beautiful, by the way. As I knew it would be.”

He realized then that the voice they used was their own, had been the whole call. There was no slip into the put-on East London accent they used in court, with press, meant to give them an air of working class credibility. They’d been using it for as long as he’d been monitoring them. Every interrogation, every studio visit. He’d known they’d grown up in Surrey and not in a more blue collar setting but they’d curated the speech pattern diligently, could’ve fooled anyone. 

But not now. With him, on the phone, their voice was entirely of the grammar school which he knew they’d attended, the voice of the high society into which he knew they’d been born. The clipped consonants and the open vowels made him believe them, in spite of everything he knew.

“Gabriel?”

“I’m here,” he responded automatically, and he was sure, against reality, he could hear them smile.

“I miss you.”

Just like that, his need spiked and he rolled on his side and curled in on himself. It hurt, to want them this badly. A bone deep ache.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to call. I’ve been busy. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for catching up.”

“Catching up,” he repeated, hysterical laughter creeping in. Was that what they were doing?

They made a small hum of confirmation. “Tell me, Gabriel. What have you been working on?”

He paused, wondering if Beelzebub would be interested in the portraits he’d been restoring for the county museum, the church that had reached out about a mural. Then he surprised himself, any resolve he had going liquid. The pleasure of having them in his ear too much to bear. “I’ve been painting,” he said.

“Oh,” they said with genuine surprise. “What have you been painting?”

_ You _ , he almost said. “Portraits,” he settled on. And the two of them proceeded to talk for twenty more minutes.

They called back again the next week, and a few nights after that. Always at 11:00pm, always from an unknown number. Each conversation became more casual, and he thought maybe they were letting their guard down with him. 

“Do you know where I am now?” they said into his ear last night as he registered the noise in the background that he hadn’t heard before.

“No.”

“I’m in New York.”

“What are you doing there?”

They ignored this question, but that was how their conversations mostly went. They would offer pieces of information and simply ignore questions that alluded to more sensitive territory. “I’m having dinner. Nice place. Expensive. White table cloths, the whole bit. And I’m sitting here on my phone. Everyone thinks I’m rude.”

“That’s because you are,” Gabriel said, smiling in spite of absolutely everything wrong with this arrangement.

Beelzebub laughed, surprised and joyful and it warmed him through.

Every time they called, he scolded himself for not hanging up, for not calling his former colleagues at the Art & Antiquities Unit to let them know that Beelzebub Prince wouldn’t stop calling him. 

Except it wasn’t as if he had ever asked them to stop. It wasn’t as if in one of their later calls he hadn’t said, “I miss you,” before they did, and they had cooed into the phone as the words tumbled out of him. It wasn’t as if Beelzebub had never coaxed him through touching himself, bringing himself off at the sound of their voice. Somehow calling the police and claiming he was being harassed by a criminal mastermind when they regularly made him come harder than he ever had in his whole godforsaken life felt like an ill conceived plan.

He barely knew who he was anymore, staring at his phone each night, knowing that if it hit five minutes after the hour without ringing then he wouldn’t hear from them, and swallowing his disappointment. He’d once been a man with an iron will, an inflexible and clear personal code of ethics. Now, he dissolved at the idea of them alone. He felt sick with desire, and love. He hated himself.

It was four months after he’d seen them when they called one evening and cut directly to the chase. “I want to see you.”

His breath caught, but they continued before he could respond.

“Not at your place. Somewhere else.”

“Why not at my place?” he asked, wondering what they knew that he didn’t, wondering if they were being watched.

“No offense, Detective, but Devon isn’t really my scene.”

“Cornwall,” he corrected.

“Whatever. Buttfuck Nowhere, United Kingdom. How do you feel about Paris?”

He paused. He liked Paris. Hadn’t been in years. Something hot bloomed in his chest at the thought of seeing them there, like this was normal, like it was not born of something profoundly, profoundly wrong. 

“Gabriel, Paris. Yes?”

He blinked. He wanted it. He wanted it so badly he thought he’d bubble over with it, and it almost, but not entirely, overwhelmed his misgivings. “Uh, when?”

Their relief was palpable, but they tried to mask it with a cool nonchalance. “Soon. Next week. I’ll text you the date, the coordinates. You’ll come?”

In their request for confirmation was real anxiety, and it had broken through their practiced, calm tones. They wanted him to come. His not coming would be a disaster for them. Maybe. Maybe he was projecting.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Good. Good. Listen, I can’t talk. I’ll send you the details.” Beelzebub was walking somewhere, he realized. Moving about, half breathless. “And I’ll see you next week.”

“Next week,” he repeated.

They hummed, pleased, and hung up. Not ten seconds later a text came through. Coordinates, a time, a date. One week. Which gave him seven days to catastrophize. 

Part of him worried this was some sort of set up, that even though the details they sent indicated a meeting time in the mid-afternoon in the tourist heavy 7th arrondissement, that it was an ambush meant to take him down once and for all. Or maybe law enforcement had been watching this the entire time, and Interpol, or French police would swoop in and arrest him for conspiracy. Or he would show up and Beelzebub wouldn’t, laughing quietly wherever they were hiding, at how low they’d brought him, how pathetic they had made him. 

All those possibilities, and he was most concerned they’d stand him up.

When he woke up in the morning, with six days to go, he felt awash in a certain clarity he’d not experienced for months. What he was doing, what he had agreed to, was nothing short of insane. There had been something wrong with him, the pressure of the job breaking him, the loneliness of a new life splitting him open and making him vulnerable. Because Beelzebub had known him so long, they could see this. They looked at him and saw an opportunity.

Whatever they felt for him it was only part of a larger game. He’d always known this, but now he could see it, when the ball was in his court. They were not descending upon him. They weren’t showing up to his home, his place of work. They had given him a time and a place and said “Come to me.”

They had diminished him but he felt, for the first time, that all was not lost. There was still something of his old self there. He could still be angry. He could still believe that what they did was wrong. He could make choices.

This had always been a choice.

In the following days, he made a plan. He would go to Paris, he would meet them on the shoreline of the Seine, and he would tell them that whatever this thing between the two of them was, it was over. 

This decision did not feel like freedom. It felt like loss. But he was turned so inside out that nothing felt the way it should. He told himself over the next six days that this was the  _ right _ choice, no matter how his heart felt about it.

* * *

_ The right choice _ , he thought to himself from his seat on the train, staring uselessly at the newspaper he had bought.  _ The right choice _ , as he left the train station, and checked his phone for directions of the hotel he’d booked for the night.  _ The right choice _ , leaving his luggage in the room and wandering the streets until their agreed upon meeting time.

“The right choice,” he whispered as he walked down the riverbank to their rendezvous point.

It was unseasonably cold for May, and wet. Gabriel clutched, and finally opened the umbrella he’d just purchased from a street vendor. The rain was steady, more than a drizzle but less than a downpour. He was passed by a group of tourists in ponchos that looked like garbage bags, but there was less company than he had anticipated. No one to overhear. For a moment he thought Beelzebub had somehow planned this, as if they could control the weather. He shook his head. He had to keep his wits about him.

He checked his watch as the minute hand ticked closer, and paced in circles. Silently, he rehearsed his speech.  _ I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing, but it’s over. Don’t call me. Don’t show up at my home. Don’t send me clients. Stay away from me. We’re through. _

He had no idea what their response would be. They could chase him down, demand he stop. Begging didn’t seem their style but maybe, if the circumstances were right, they’d do it. He would just keep walking, staring straight ahead, as long as it took for them to give up. Then he would have one night in Paris to himself. He could take the train to Versaille, visit La Maréchalerie like he’d been wanting to. He would be untethered.

Gabriel turned this fantasy over in his mind, ignored the weak points and plot holes, ignored the secondary fantasy where he still went to La Maréchalerie but in the buzzing presence of a small, dark person who would talk through the pieces with him, challenge him, laugh with him.

“Hello.”

Gabriel startled. He’d been staring at the river, descending into his warring daydreams when the lithe figure of Beelzebub had materialized beside him. 

Breath left him as their mouth curved into a smile. It felt authentic, like they were genuinely pleased to see him. He wanted to trust it.

It took less than a second for him to know he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plan to tell them, now, here, that he couldn’t see them again. Their mere presence unmoored him from reality, and brought him closer to them.

Their hair was damp. They’d been walking in the rain. Their black coat concealed how small they really were, cut in that boxy way he understood was stylish at the moment, having seen similar garments on commuters more than once during his trip through London that very morning.

“You made it,” they said, and their voice was soft.

He was fucked.

“I did,” he replied.

He had no idea where to go from here.

They gazed at one another, and he resisted the urge to kiss them. The fears that this was a sort of snare now seemed unfounded. Maybe, for an hour or two, he could let himself believe they had just wanted to see him.

He studied their face and he noticed that they were impossibly paler than he’d seen them before, the dark circles under their eyes more pronounced. It only served to remind him of the shocking blue of their irises, which at this moment were trained on him. But the minor shift in their already pale complexion was enough to worry him.

“Have you been sick?” he asked, the concern plain in his voice.

Beelzebub’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, their smile slipping. “What?”

“You look,” he started, and gestured to his own face. “A little pale.”

Beelzebub took a breath, opened their mouth, then closed it. He’d thrown them off. They looked away for a split second before coming back to him, focused again. “Nice of you, telling me I look like shit within the first minute.”

“You don’t look like shit,” he said, meaning it. He wasn’t sure how they’d take  _ you look beautiful. _

“I’m a little tired. That’s all. We should get something to drink.” With that, they began to walk back up towards the street, leaving Gabriel frozen in place. They turned over their shoulder, grinning. “Are you coming or not?”

Wordlessly, he half-jogged to catch up. As he reached them, he tried to angle his umbrella over them, to keep them out of the rain. It was a dangerous impulse, more of an admission of love than anything he had done yet.

They looked up, and something flashed in their eyes when they realized what he was doing. “Let’s just…” they started, then they tucked themself under his arm, their own wrapped around his waist. His heart pounded. They were in public, and they were touching. Like he wasn’t Gabriel Bote, former detective with the Metropolitan Police, and they weren’t Beelzebub Prince, suspected art forger and thief. Like they could be anyone in the whole world. 

He could pretend, for a little bit. He placed his hand on their lower back and their hand came up to his chest. Their hair smelled wet, and he didn’t care, he buried his nose in it anyway. They curled into one another as he sheltered them from the rain, and tried to find somewhere to go.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: At the end of this chapter there is an ambiguous surprise. While there is nothing explicit or violent about it, please skip to the end notes if you prefer to be prepared for that sort of thing.

Gabriel would tell Beelzebub it was over just as soon as they found a place to sit down. He would tell them it was over when they weren’t touching him, when their hand didn’t stake a possessive claim on his chest. 

He studiously avoided looking at the Musée D'Orsay as they passed it, uncomfortable with the knowledge of the job they’d pulled there five years ago. A swapped Manet that had likely been gone for months. The original was still at large. He still, even now, had no idea how involved they’d been. Had they painted the stunning forgery, two milk white women looking down from their balcony to the street below? Or had they slipped through the security cracks in the dead of night to strip the canvasses? For his money, he’d always suspected they planned the heist, each minute of it down to the second. They were brilliant, and conniving. They could not be played. There was a warmth in his chest when he thought about it that felt suspiciously like admiration.

“When were you last at the D’Orsay?” Beelzebub asked as they walked past, gaze lingering on the dwindling line-up. The crowds that normally lined the plaza waiting to get in had thinned, having given up due to the rain. 

He sighed. There was no point in obfuscating. “Four years ago.” He’d been investigating, which they surely knew. He took a gamble with his next question. “How about you?”

“Me? I’ve never been.”

He looked down sharply, and they looked up, eyes glinting in pleasure. They were messing with him, but instead of the anger he was used to and anticipated, he found inside of himself the briefest flutter of fond annoyance.

“We could go now, if you like,” Beelzebub continued, a mischievous smirk pulling at their lips. “You’re tall, you could help me stake the place out.”

That, however, cut slightly too close to the bone, was too keen a mockery of who he used to be. “Don’t do that,” he muttered, loosening his grip on them.

Their response was immediate. They pressed themself closer to him where he’d pulled away, their side against his. A small hand pulled his jacket out of shape. “I’m joking,” they hissed. “Fuck, just a joke. Once a detective, always a detective, hm?”

He grimaced.  _ Detective _ in sensibility maybe, if not in action.  _ Detective _ in that he felt pained at a joke about their planning a heist, but not enough of one to not be here with them, to not love the feeling of them clutching his jacket.

“We both know that I’ve had nothing to do with any  _ criminal activity _ .” They emphasized their final words by dropping their voice an octave, raising an eyebrow.

He laughed, in spite of himself, a breathy huff. “Ha, right.”

“You heard the verdicts, Gabriel. I’m clean as a whistle.”

“Stop,” he muttered, and they laughed.

They found a brasserie another half hour walk away. Away from the major museums and shops, on a roundabout with a statue neither of them knew the name of. Gabriel settled into a chair and Beelzebub sat beside him, rather than across. Pressed shoulder to shoulder, they watched as the rain came down as steady as it had been, sparing no pedestrian.

Beelzebub ordered a sparkling water in flawless French. He ordered a coffee, hoping the caffeine would shake him out of the trance they seemed set on putting him in. They smiled as he ordered, his accent clumsy and sounding hopelessly foreign.

The sparkling water surprised him. He’d pictured them with a glass of something blood red that would stain their teeth. High alcohol content, dry and biting. “No wine?” he asked, as the server placed their drinks on the table

Beelzebub shrugged, turned their sweating glass with their fingers. “No, I find… Half a glass and I need to go to bed. I get foggy. I don’t like it.” They sighed and brought the glass to their lips, watching a group of teenagers walk past, laughing and hunched over in the rain. The clink of their glass against the tabletop rang louder than it should’ve. “I like feeling everything.”

Gabriel involuntarily hummed in agreement. 

“You don’t drink,” they continued. A statement. Something they knew though he couldn’t remember telling them. This didn’t surprise him any more. They seemed to be as knowledgeable of his preferences as he was.

“No,” he confirmed.

“And why’s that?”

He narrowed his eyes, refusing to look over at them. “Seems like a bad habit to get into.” He drank the coffee, and thought about his former colleagues, how many of them kept bottles of whiskey in their desk drawers. How it made them sloppy. He wondered if, at this point, he was any better than they were, even if he was sober.

“You’re all about good habits, aren’t you?” Beelzebub teased.

“Try to be.”

They leaned into him. “Then what do you call this?”

Gabriel swallowed and stared into his glass. “Call what?” he asked, knowing precisely what they were questioning him about.

They humoured his playing dumb. “Coming to see me here. Is this a  _ good _ habit?” 

Gabriel didn’t answer, choosing instead to take another drink, hoping the coffee had somehow become hotter, would scald him as punishment for coming here.

Beelzebub let him sit in silence for a few moments, then he could feel their hand on his leg under the table. It drifted towards the crux of his thighs and his spine stiffened. “Does it make you feel good?” they asked, voice low, husky.

Gabriel, on instinct, looked out to the street in front of them, casting his gaze up and down. It was practically deserted. They had no audience. Even then he couldn’t answer them. If he were to tell them that the last hour with them was the happiest he’d been in four months (though, perhaps that wasn’t saying much given he lived so much of his time in tortured misery), then he couldn’t do what he had come here to do. He wouldn’t be able to walk away from them and know it was the last time.

He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the stirring between his legs. “Do you want something to eat?” he said, louder than he needed to.

Beelzebub withdrew their hand, and he both felt relieved and mourned the sensation in tandem. “No,” Beelzebub said, smiling, knowing they hadn’t been rejected. “No appetite. But if you’re hungry, you should get something.” 

“No,” he said, glancing down at the place their hand had been. “No appetite.”

They asked how his trip had been, how his coffee was. They asked if he was still painting and he confirmed he was, though he was reluctant to discuss what, or who, exactly his subject was. Their clear delight in the line of questioning led him to think that perhaps they’d ascertained his subject, and simply wanted the satisfaction of hearing him say it out loud. He struggled with what to ask them about that could be considered safe ground. Beelzebub tended to ignore questions they didn’t want to, or couldn’t answer. Finally, he asked them where they lived, anticipating a non-answer, but their response was clear, almost excited.

“It’s funny you should ask. I’ve just bought a place. I’ve been living out of a suitcase for ages. Feels strange.”

“Where?”

“Switzerland.”

He laughed. Of course. Land of milk, honey, and untraceable bank accounts.

“Have you been?” they asked with what appeared to be genuine interest.

“A long time ago,” Gabriel said. “Beautiful country.”

“It is,” said Beelzebub, and their hand slipped into his, and rested on his thigh.

He stared at their intertwined fingers, how small their hand looked in his. He remembered the first time he’d registered their size in a real way, when he’d pressed them up against the wall in the hallway of his London apartment. He’d held their wrists above their head as they’d taunted him. And now they sat side by side on the streets of Paris, and he was worried about their cold fingers, had to fight the urge to take them to his lips and blow hot breath onto them to warm them up. It was remarkable how far they had dragged him down, how in less than a year they’d dismantled a resolve of which he’d once been so proud. When he’d held them to that wall, he’d thought they were weak. He almost smiled. Projection at its finest.

“Why did you stop painting?” Beelzebub’s voice, soft and curious, cut through the din of his own swirling thoughts. He shook his head a little, then ran his thumb over theirs. 

He would enjoy this, it was only a matter of time before he said goodbye.

“I wasn’t very good.” 

Beelzebub scoffed. “I don’t believe that.”

He thought back to his early work, the stuff he tried to sell. One professor had called it ‘uninspired, paint-by-numbers pap’ and they hadn’t been wrong. “Believe it,” he muttered. “I’m better at restoration.”

“And investigation,” they added, like it was true. Like they hadn’t gotten away from him every single time.

“Arguable.”

Beelzebub laughed softly, but didn’t oppose him. They were silent for a few moments, watching people walk by. It was only when they leaned forward to check the distance of a runner that Gabriel realized they were waiting to speak until they couldn’t be overheard. Their small hand gripped his hard. 

“I have a question,” they said so quietly it was almost a whisper. They touched their forehead to his shoulder. “Say I did those things you think I’ve done.”

Gabriel almost choked on his breath. Was this a confession of sorts, couched in a hypothetical? He proceeded with caution. “Which things?”

“All of them, Gabriel. Don’t be coy.” They leaned away from him and he could feel their eyes burning holes in the side of his face. Gabriel stared resolutely forward. “Say I slipped into the D’Orsay during the dead of night and somehow swapped a Manet with a perfect reproduction. If no one notices, if no one notices for months that anything at all is amiss, then who am I hurting?”

His response was automatic, rehearsed. “The artist.” 

They snorted. “Edouard Manet is dead, try again.”

He didn’t quite agree with that assessment, but he knew it wasn’t an argument that would fly with them. So he moved on. “The people.”

Beelzebub tipped their head back and laughed at that. Full throated and sarcastic. He turned to stare at them in annoyance, and instead got distracted by the line of their throat.

They caught their breath, wiped away a mirthful tear. “Listen to you,  _ the people _ .”

He frowned. He knew he was supposed to, felt like he was supposed to. Frowning was the correct response, but he couldn’t ignore the flicker of joy deep in his belly at their repartee, their easy exchange. “I’m serious,” he started, and thought back to the crimes that had gotten most under his skin. “Great works of art - the Manet, the Turner, the Cezanne - they belong to the people.”

“And if  _ the people _ can’t tell the fucking difference?” Their eyes met his in joyful defiance.

“It’s the principle of the thing. You’re not just looking at the painting, you’re looking at the history. When collectors are buying pieces, they’re buying the painting  _ and _ the history of it.”

Beelzebub scoffed again. “They’re buying the myth.”

“The history,” Gabriel insisted.

Beelzebub turned full in their seat to face him, their grip on his hand breaking. No sooner could he miss their fingers in his was Beelzebub pressing one of those fingers into the centre of his chest. “I paint a perfect replica of a Cezanne, a veritable masterpiece, but because it’s by me and not him it’s supposedly worthless. No one will pay a cent for it.”

The realization that this was a confession, that they’d just told him that they were the forger should have had him on the phone to Interpol. Instead, he thought back to that perfect, fake, Cezanne. Beelzebub was a talent. Always had been.

“No one is buying the fucking art, Gabriel,” they said. “They're only buying the myth.”

He shook his head. “It’s more than that.”

“How?”

It had been years since he had the chance to talk like this, remember that he loved the debate. “It’s the effect you get, when you look at a piece. It’s the  _ feeling _ you get. The way it opens you up. It’s not just the canvas. It’s what's behind it. It’s what the artist wanted to do.”

They smiled at his growing enthusiasm, propping their elbow up on the back of their chair and leaning their cheek into their hand. “You’re saying the intent matters.”

“It absolutely matters.”

Their eyebrows rose. “The intent informs the effect.”

“Yes.”

They looked deeply satisfied, with what he wasn’t sure. They took a leisurely drink of their water, then cleared their throat and spoke very slowly. “You think the collectors who buy art and stick it in some climate controlled warehouse until they can flip it for a higher price give a fuck about the intent of the artist.”

He’d had that exact thought before, and he felt like he could read their mind. “No,” he said after a pause, unable to extend his argument any further.

“I will give you this,” they started, holding their hand out in front of them in a sort of offering. “Having the work hang on the wall of a gallery or museum anyone can access is a more noble thing than private collecting, but the whole thing’s broken. This  _ obsession _ with the limited output of a handful of dead men will kill us.” They took another drink of their water, clearly feeling they had made their point even if he wasn’t sure what was being killed. 

Was this it, then? The motivation? They believed the system was broken and so didn’t need to be engaged in in a legitimate way? That it, in fact,  _ should _ be deliberately fucked with? He was desperate to know, but he had to ask around it. He couldn’t interrogate them right out.

“Why did you stop painting?” he asked, echoing their earlier question. They hadn’t ever stopped painting; he knew they hadn’t. They’d just been devoting their efforts to learning and copying the techniques of the great masters. They had stopped doing their own work.

The question caught Beelzebub off guard, their eyes widening. “What?”

He tipped his head to the side and looked into their eyes. His old training kicked in. It was like being back in an interrogation room, that is, if any of his suspects had held his hand. A preternatural calm descended onto him as he continued. “If you’re so worried about our obsession with a handful of dead men, then why did you stop painting? You could’ve turned the industry upside down.”

They laughed, but bitterly this time. He’d hit a sore spot. “There was no room for someone like me.” They looked away from him and out to the street.

“You were good.”

“Oh, was I?” 

He nodded. “I remember people saying you were good.”

“Hm,” mumbled Beelzebub, and for a moment they went somewhere else. When they spoke again, their voice cracked. “What else do you remember?”

He furrowed his brow, tried to sort out what they were asking him. “What do you mean?”

They smiled sadly, shook their head to dispel whatever memory had come to them. “Nevermind. I was good, yes. But that’s not enough.”

“It can be.”

Finally, they turned back to him, sad smile hardening into a grim line. “Can it?”

“I think so.”

They chuckled darkly. “If you want me to believe the art world is a meritocracy you’re going to have to give me a better argument than that.”

He sighed. “I just… have to believe it. I have to believe that if you have the talent, you can rise.”

Something in their gaze sharpened. “That’s a very touching image, Gabriel. But you know it’s not real.” 

His eyes never left them. “Then what is?”

“Me and you.” They hadn’t hesitated, and the strength of their voice pulled all the control back to them. He was left off balance, and flailing.

Gabriel thought maybe, if he could put one foot in front of the other, that this could be the moment he could leave.  _ We are not real. Nothing about this is real.  _

“I don’t know about that,” he murmured.

“No?” They moved closer to him and he could feel their breath on his skin. The ground was slipping out from underneath him, all hope of balance gone. They undermined him so quickly. 

“Beelzebub…” he said, their name heavy on his tongue. Tangible.

“Look at me and tell me this isn’t real.” Their hand came up to hold his chin, keep him in place. They were so close. “Hm? Tell me.”

“I…” He couldn’t.

“You can’t. You can’t lie to me. I know you, Detective.”

Their lips met his and it was so light, like static electricity. He wanted more, to feel the sting of it burning his nervous system, making his hair stand on end. He wanted them to scorch him. 

They placed their other hand flat on his chest, over his heart. Each point of contact an anchor to them and them only. “We’re real,” Beelzebub said, in a voice that did not invite argument. “We’re similar, you and I, in so many ways. I know you feel it. We need one another.”

He might have moaned then. He couldn’t say for sure. All there was were their eyes, their hands, their words.

“We don’t exist without one another. We’re the only real ones here.” Their words were steady and sure but their eyes were pleading with him. Their hands came to the side of his face and they came forward to kiss him again.

He couldn’t help but put his arms around them, bury a hand in their hair. The arm of the chair he sat in cut into his hip but he barely noticed it. His hands were full of them. His mouth. They were real. In daylight. Together. The rain poured down beside them.

“Come back to my hotel,” they whispered into his lips.

He pulled back, pressed his forehead to theirs. He wasn’t going to be able to do it. He wouldn’t be able to tell them it was over. He didn’t want it to be. “Shit.”

“Gabriel?” they said, sounding worried for the first time.

“Okay,” he responded, immediately. What was the point in pretending he wasn’t going to?

“Good.” A hopeful expression bloomed on their face that made his heart pound.

They curled into him as they led him back to the hotel. His hand clutched the handle of his umbrella so tightly his knuckles had gone stark white. He was shaking. It had taken almost no convincing to get him to give up his plan and they hadn’t even known what it was.

So, he thought to himself, it wouldn’t be this time. The next time he saw them, he would end this for good.

He wondered how many times he would tell himself that.

At traffic lights, as they waited on street corners to cross, Beelzebub would look up at him, smile. The further they walked, and ostensibly the closer to their hotel they got, some anxiety grew behind their eyes. He wondered what they were afraid of, or if they couldn’t believe their luck. There was also the possibility that they were always this nervous, but that he hadn’t seen it before, so lost in his own head.

The sky was grey but still light enough to drink in their high, round cheekbones, pert nose, sweet chin. He had started to think of parts of them as  _ sweet _ , which terrified him. It felt illicit, to be this in love where anyone could see the two of them, together.

Beelzebub brought him to a small, boutique hotel. He closed his umbrella before entering the lobby, where they were immediately greeted with towels. He felt deeply conspicuous, and cast his eyes around the small, opulent lobby, searching for onlookers. Beelzebub quickly towel dried their hair, leaving it a mess and passed the towel back to a uniformed member of the staff, nodding in thanks. He dried off his hands and arms, not sure what else to do, and let the staff take it from him.

With their hand in his they drew him into the elevator. Small and mirrored, it would’ve barely held another person. It was a relic. At another time, he might’ve studied the woodwork, taken note of the hotel name to look up the history, but now, with their upturned face pointing in his direction, Beelzebub was his sole focus.

Their eyes were still worried as they began to wordlessly undo his jacket, pulling down the zipper. Their breath hitched and their hands came up to his chest. For a moment, their expression pulled downwards and he thought they might cry. He brought his hand to the side of their face and stroked it with his thumb, not sure what was happening, not knowing how to ask.

His hand dropped, going for the collar of their coat, but they grabbed it and pressed a kiss to the soft flesh under his thumb. Had they ever kissed his hand before? Had he ever kissed theirs?

The doors opened and Beelzebub pulled him out, down a narrow hallway then to the door that was theirs, fumbling in their pocket for the key. It was made of brass, antique looking. Not like the keycards everyone had these days. More real somehow. He wondered if this was one of the reasons they stayed here.

They drew him into the room. It was beautiful. Windows that opened out to a courtyard, antique furnishings, bright white sheets. A small black suitcase stood upright in the corner, as if they’d dropped it and left. A similar scene could’ve been found at his own hotel room, though the room wasn’t half as nice. His was a place for business travel. This was a room one could live in. 

Beelzebub took the umbrella out of his hand and propped it up against the wall. With their hands on his waist they directed him to turn, and they slid the jacket off his shoulders, and put it on a hanger in the small closet by the door. Each touch, action, was steeped in tenderness. He wanted to live in this moment, forget about how they had gotten here, protect himself from anything that could come after.

Their breathing was shallow and quick, and their hands came back to his chest and they ran them up to his neck. Without thinking, he took their face in his hands, cradled it. 

“I missed you, Gabriel,” they said in a voice he was still getting used to. They pulled him down to them and kissed him, once, quick. “Have you missed me?”

He moaned into the kiss, eyes closing. His hands slipped down to their collar and he began to undo their coat. This time they let him, and they helped. He could hear the rustle of it sliding off their shoulders and onto the floor.

They took his hand and put it to their breast, and he moaned again, aching. At this same time, unease crept up his spine, poised to whisper in his ear that something was not right. Then they guided his hand down again.

He pulled away from them and looked down, where they had pressed his hand into the obvious swell of their stomach. 

Gabriel pulled his hand away as if he’d been burned, jumped back and collided with the wall of the vestibule. The world turned upside down. He couldn't catch his breath. “I… I can’t… fuck.”

He closed his eyes, willing that this whole fucking thing had been a dream, that all he had to do was wake up. But when he opened them they were still there, their face broken wide open and frozen in place with their hand reaching out to him.

“It’s not real,” he said, still breathless. “It can’t be real.”

Beelzebub’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, but when they opened them, he was met with a new and determined resolve. With the delicate hand that had just held the back of his neck, they pulled up their shirt, revealing a wide stroke of pale skin, the lesions that were tattooed in his memory, and their belly, rounded where four months ago it hadn’t been. They were pregnant.

They took a breath. “It’s real.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning Note: Beelzebub is pregnant! Gabriel is very, very surprised.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: From this chapter forward there are instances of sex while Beelzebub is pregnant. If that’s a no-go for you, you can skip to chapter 5.

“Gabriel?”

“No.”

“Gabriel.”

“No, no.” 

He propelled himself to the opposite side of the room, to the wall beside the window that looked out onto a Haussmann-style building identical to the one he was inside now, with french doors that opened up onto juliet balconies with curled iron railings. But the postcard perfect image faded away as his vision tunneled down to only what was immediately in front of his face. His legs felt as if they were sinking into the floor, like he was dragging them through quicksand.

Gabriel met the wall and pressed his forehead to it, laid the sweating palms of his hands against the textured wallpaper. He couldn’t take a breath deep enough into his lungs and somewhere in the distance he could hear himself gasping for air. He was slipping under.

It wasn’t that, throughout their entanglements, he had assumed that Beelzebub was infertile, or that they’d have things ‘taken care of’ if the need arose. The pathetic truth was he hadn’t thought of it at all. Not once. He had, throughout his life, thought himself a careful, meticulous man. But from the first time he held them, no part of him considered this particular consequence, the logical conclusion of his actions. From the first moment he touched them, he had started to come apart. They had been dismantling him from the start.

“Oh God,” he muttered into the wall, spreading his fingers. He pictured himself somehow passing through it, plummeting, tumbling through open air and directly into the courtyard below, his body cracked into a mess of broken bones to match his mind.

“Gabriel.” His name again, echoing from very far away. Beelzebub’s voice was smooth and steady, and entirely in control. He ached to lean towards it, to let himself fall into them like he’d done when he’d panicked in his workshop, but to do that he would have to witness them, to see how they were different, to confirm how they’d been changed. By him. Unless…

Beelzebub had come to stand beside him, placid and still. They did not touch him. They did not speak.

“It’s not,” he started, eyes darting over to look at them, their body. They’d pulled their shirt back down, their skin hidden from view, but their transformation was so obvious on their thin frame now that their jacket was off. “It’s not mine.”

Bile rose in his throat before he’d even finished his assertion. The mere idea that it wasn’t his, that the  _ child _ inside Beelzebub was not his was enough to make him sick on an empty stomach. The startling new reality descended on him like a storm. Every minute he spent with them opened more impossible doors inside of him, revealed new and terrible desires. As impossible as this all seemed, he wanted the child to be his.

A small hand came to his back and he flinched away from it instinctively, but Beelzebub was not discouraged. “It’s yours. It’s ours.” They ran their hand up his spine, rubbed his shoulder. Then their forehead dropped to his bicep, and their hot breath weaved its way through the knit of his sweater. They inhaled sharply through their nose. “No one else touches me. Only you can.”

No one else touched them. Since when? Since that first night when they told him they didn’t want it? Before? In all the time he’d tracked them, studied them, he’d never known them to have a romantic partner. It was never something he could leverage against them when he’d been interrogating them, trying to strike deals. And now they told him no one else touched them but him. It crossed his mind briefly to not believe them, but he couldn’t linger on the thought. The mere flicker of the idea of someone else's hands on them, hands that were not his own was enough to make his meltdown tint with the deep red of rage. So, with an efficiency surprising for his current state, he banished the thought. They said no one else touched them, and he accepted it as truth.

In the midst of his fierce panic, this belief shouldn’t have felt divine, but it did. 

Very slowly, they stepped around him, their hands never leaving him, sliding over his shoulders, arms, chest. They leaned their head against the wall to look at his face, still contorted in distress. Their small hand rubbed circles into his sternum.

“Breathe, my darling. Breathe. It’s alright. Everything is going to be alright.”

He wanted to laugh but it came out as a sob. Detective, then Gabriel, now  _ darling _ . He could feel his heart raging against his head. Did he want them, or was he terrified of them? Did he want to stay or leave? Was this devastating, or the single most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him? How in the world would any of this ever be  _ alright _ ?

In the midst of this internal war he couldn’t help how his body responded to them. With each gentle caress of their hands his panic receded. Their whispered words brought him back to himself. Beelzebub was both his ruin and his salvation, and he was a fool for allowing the dichotomy to exist.

“Come on, away from there. You need to sit.” Beelzebub lifted Gabriel’s arm up and around their shoulder and it felt like it was asleep, his whole body numb or made of buzzing pins and needles. With their arm around his waist, they guided him over to the bed. He sat down, the fluffy duvet rising around him. 

Beelzebub stood in front of him, and reached out to stroke his temple, ran their fingers behind his ear, like they’d be tucking his hair back if it weren’t cropped so tightly.

“There you are.” They looked right into him, past his eyes somehow, right into his warring heart. “I know this is a shock, but this is  _ good _ , my darling.” They smiled, mouth full of sharp teeth. “This is a good thing.”

He didn’t know if  _ good _ was the word he would have chosen to describe what he had just learned, but at this point, it hardly mattered. He was here. He had chosen to be here. He had chosen to be with them and to touch them and to fuck them. Point A, to point B, to point C. A logical progression that he could not see until it was right in front of him. How stupid he had been to delude himself that he’d ever be able to tell them that he was done with them. They’d never be done with one another.

He looked to their stomach. Their child. His. This had not  _ happened _ to him. It had been done by him.

Gabriel raised his hand from the duvet, and it hovered in the air a moment as he hesitated. He swallowed painfully, then with a rushed intake of breath rested it on the swell of their belly. It was warm, radiating with heat even through the fabric of their top, and it shifted with their breathing. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Beelzebub hummed in satisfaction. Tears threatened at the corners of his eyes.

“I wanted so badly to tell you before,” they murmured, fingers still carding through his hair, “but I needed to be sure it would stay.”

All the times they had called him, they had known. He wondered if it was possible for them to have known before they’d left his workshop, before they’d gotten down from his worktable. Could they have recognized and understood the change in their own body even then? He felt a stinging loss then, somewhere behind his heart at what he had missed. For a very brief and fleeting moment he imagined a version of his life where this had been on purpose, where he could have waited quietly with them, to see if it would stay.

Their thumb came up to brush a tear away he hadn’t realized had fallen. They bent forward and kissed his forehead with cool, dry lips.

With sudden and desperate clarity, he knew he had to see. Trying to subdue his frantic nerves, Gabriel pushed his shaking hands under Beelzebub’s shirt and peeled it up, revealing what he and Beelzebub had done, had made together.

They made a quiet noise of surprise, then cooed at him, obviously pleased. “Yes, darling,” they whispered as his broad hands travelled over their skin. “It’s yours.”

His moan came out as a whimper, a broken thing. Their skin was stretched taut, the curve so obvious on their thin body. For a moment all he could do was take them in, map the subtle marks of them, a freckle, a dark red patch of skin by their belly button. His hands came to rest on their hips and something grew inside him, heavy and heady. It felt like satisfaction.

He hadn’t known to want this. But they were his now in a way, and he  _ had _ wanted that. To pin them down, to own them. This was not how he imagined it manifesting, but at the end of the day, hadn’t he gotten what he wanted?

“Take this off,” he said, tugging at the hem of their shirt. His voice was flimsy, with no weight behind it, but they fulfilled his request, pulling their shirt over their head and depositing it on the floor beside Gabriel’s feet. “And this.” His finger hooked over the front of their simple bra.

As they reached behind their back to undo the clasp they bit their bottom lip. Their eyes were alight in desire and want and he wondered if he looked the same. They peeled the fabric away, revealing their still small, but swollen breasts.

“Fuck,” he whispered, one of his hands rising to cup one, his thumb sliding over their dark nipple. It hardened under his touch and his cock ached in his trousers. Until now, he somehow hadn’t noticed his own arousal. 

People had so much to say about love and how it was supposed to look.  _ Love is patient, love is kind. _ He’d never found either to be true. He found those sort of pronouncements to be from people who hadn’t lived like he had, carrying on his back a failed marriage to a woman who he had once loved the ‘right’ way. Those people liked to say that love was not lust, nor desire, nor obsession. But for him, one felt so much like the other. They were threaded together, overlapping and intertwining. They could not exist without the other. What he felt for Beelzebub, this living thing that breathed and grew inside him, was all of those things. No one could tell him that it was not love. It was all he felt when he touched them.

“Gabriel?” 

Their quiet recitation of his name spurred him forward. He pulled them towards him and kissed the place where their ribs disappeared under the rise of their belly, then down to their waist, then cradling their arm in this hand, brushed his lips over the inside of their elbow.

Their breathing caught as his lips covered the raised welts on their arms. He would ask them, sometime, not today, if those places were sore, if he could help them. His fingers caught in the waistband of their trousers, and without asking he pulled them down around their knees, their underwear too. They gasped and braced their hands on his arm.

He turned them, kissed open mouthed across their skin, onto their back. With his fingertips he traced the rise of their spine down to their bottom. He’d never had this kind of time with them before, the space to know their body like he knew their mind, the space to really  _ see _ them like they had asked him to, once. He drew his hand over their small bottom and let it come to rest on the back of their slim thigh. His thumb slipped between their legs and they were wet.

“Fuck,” he said, savouring the feel of it. 

Then they were pulling at his sweater and it shook him from his trance. He leaned back and let them pull it over his shoulders. They kicked off their trousers, awkwardly balancing themself on his arm as they shed them.

Beelzebub was bare in front of him. Not a stitch of clothing. Again, he traced the lines, and new curves of them with his gaze. The last vestiges of his panic slipped away and a strange and silent calm, unlike anything he had felt before settled in his chest and began to run through his veins. Every time he thought he knew what surrender looked like, he arrived in a new moment, and was proven wrong. He had not surrendered before because he was doing it now, for the last time. 

“You’re exquisite,” he said, earnest and a little eager. 

Their eyes shone back at his, and in all his years knowing them, he’d never seen them more satisfied. They held his head in their hands, and said nothing in return.

“Can I,” he started, feeling deeply embarrassed for the question he was going to ask, “Can  _ we _ , like this?”

Beelzebub’s eyes narrowed in confusion, an expression he was entirely unfamiliar with. They let out a strange little laugh. “What in the world are you talking about?”

He grimaced at his own gracelessness. He considered a moment then laid his hand on their belly, fingers splayed. “Can we be together when you’re…” He rubbed his thumb back and forth and was grateful for the flash of recognition that came to their face.

That recognition quickly became amusement and Beez barked out a laugh that he could feel vibrate through them. “Oh, darling. Are you asking if you can fuck me when I’m pregnant? Do you not know?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, his face burned. 

“Shh shh shh. Don’t be embarrassed.” They chuckled softly, then their voice went dark. “It is absolutely crucial that you fuck me like this.” They kissed him soundly, then moved to arrange themself back on the bed, directing him to take off his trousers, then spreading their legs and moaning in ecstatic little keens as he sunk into them. 

Gabriel stayed on his knees, their hips grasped tight in his hands, and their knees squeezed into his sides. He looked down on them from his position, watching their face contort, the way their hand gripped and ungripped the pillow, the downward curve of their mouth as they moaned. He loved the way he could make their body move with each thrust, that drag of their hips across the sheets.

Their blue eyes stared up at him when they weren’t closed tight, lost to the sensation. Their gaze carried knowledge with it. They’d been steps ahead of him at every point, lived with the upper hand. Beelzebub had always set the terms. They had set the traps. He had fallen into them at every opportunity, and he was  _ grateful _ .

Whatever they wanted, he was theirs.

After, when Beelzebub had come with a ferocity that shocked the both of them and Gabriel had been helpless in holding back his own climax, he curled into their side, his face tucked into the beautiful space where their shoulder met their neck. They held his hand to their stomach. It rose and fell in a steady pattern with their breath. Whenever he’d kiss their neck they’d hum and he could feel it against his lips.

He held what he had made, felt distinctly as his life split into a new before and after, and realized this new after was entirely unknown to him.

“What happens now?” he asked, hoping they knew.

They exhaled, swallowed. “We’ll be together, of course.”

_ Of course. _ Like it was preordained. “How?” 

“Not right away.” Their words felt rehearsed. “You’ll need to wrap up things in  _ Devon _ .” They put emphasis on the name of the county, as if to show they’d been listening in the earlier phone call. “Close your business, but not right away. Gradually, over a few months. So few small businesses work out, so it shouldn’t raise any eyebrows. And then when the time is right I’ll send for you.”

“What does that mean,  _ send for me _ ?” There were a million questions sprung from just this first pronouncement.

He could feel Beelzebub smiling into his forehead. “You let me worry about that, hm?” They stroked his hand. “The place I bought, in Switzerland. It’s perfect. I can’t wait for you to see it. You’ll like it. It’s private. No one will bother us there.”

Gabriel clung closer to them as everything he knew of his life started to fall away. He could feel himself starting to disappear already, wrapped up in their web until the only thing he was, was what they wanted.

“Can I ask you something?” 

They tensed beneath him.

“You can ask me anything you like. Whether or not I choose to answer is a different matter.”

He almost laughed. There was a kind of relief in hearing it stated so plainly, a truthful moment in a relationship that had been built on subterfuge. He drew back from them, pushing himself up on his elbow, and looked into their face. Pale and pink cheeked. Slightly cracked lips. Those dark circles under their eyes. He wondered if they’d been sick in the early months but that wasn’t what he needed to ask. That could be a question for another day.

“Did you mean for it to happen?”

Their mouth dropped open, a soft O, then they closed it, never taking their eyes off him. They held his chin in their small hand before kissing him, then sighed. “I need to go.”

He drew back and grabbed their wrist. “What?”

“I’m sorry, darling. I hate to run but my time is very carefully scheduled these days.” They pried his fingers away, pushed themself up, slowly, to sitting, then standing.

Gabriel stayed where he was, frozen. 

“The room is yours for the night, should you want it. It’s nicer than where you’re staying.”

He shook his head. “How do you know where I’m staying?”

Beelzebub laughed with genuine delight as they picked up their scattered clothes, dressed. “I don’t. But no place in Paris is nicer than this one. Tell me, is this nicer than what you have booked?”

It was, of course. He shook his head again. 

“I’m sure it is. Like I said, I’ll be in touch. Three month timeline.” Fully dressed, they came back to him, climbing onto the bed. Their arms bracketed his head where he’d fallen back onto his pillow. “Three months. Then we’ll be together. Nothing stopping us.” They smiled, and folded within it was a question, a flash of vulnerability. They wanted him to say yes.

“Okay,” he said, with a voice cracked in half.

They grinned. Kissed him. Then they were up, putting on their jacket, fixing their tangled hair in the mirror.

Gabriel sat up and watched them. “How can I get in touch with you?”

“You won’t.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Trust me, my darling. It’s for your own good.” They made for the door.

“I love you.” It was out of his mouth without a thought and they froze in place. Their shoulders rose and fell with their breath. The air in the room vibrated. Expanded and contracted. There was no question that they had heard him but they did not turn back to him. Was this a thing he was not supposed to say out loud? He cleared his throat. “Beelzebub?”

Their hand came up to rest on their chest, a steadying gesture. So slowly, they turned to him, their expression tight, their eyes unmistakably red with tears that hadn’t quite fallen. 

“Three months,” they said. “Before you know it.”

He hadn’t known how badly he had wanted them to say _ I love you too  _ until they failed to say it back.

“I have to go. I have to go.” Then they were gone.

When he left the room the next morning, he felt like he was leaving a body behind, the man he thought he was, the corpse of his former life. There was an empty place inside of him as he shut the door, an ache that echoed, reverberated against his bones.


	4. Chapter 4

The phone calls came as they had before, late in the evening and from unknown numbers. Gabriel always ensured his phone was close at hand, never out of his sight. He jumped every time it rang. As the weeks passed, his nerves frayed. He lost his appetite. The single thing that felt at all nourishing was the sound of Beelzebub’s voice.

In Paris, he had prostrated himself at the feet of his former adversary. Taken off his armour. Offered his sword. He had chosen surrender over everything else and for a very short time it had felt like something akin to bliss. Hours, maybe. But in their absence, a vibrating anxiety built up in him again until his body was thick with it.

He returned to England in a fog, unable to think about anything other than Beelzebub and their child.

Each day that followed brought brand new lows, as he thought about everything in the life before him that could possibly go wrong. He imagined that Beelzebub wasn’t pregnant at all, that it was all somehow an elaborate ruse, meant to debase and humiliate him. Or that there  _ was _ a child, but that it wasn’t his, despite the timing and what they’d told him. It was all a depraved scheme to get him in their clutches so he could work for their operation. These catastrophic theories made less sense when he considered the surrounding facts: that his lack of standing relationship with any law enforcement agency made him of negligible value; he had no real skill when it came to forgery or copying; and there was nothing exceptional about his abilities as a restorer.

The new lows contrasted starkly against the dizzying highs he experienced when the phone would finally ring and he’d hear them say his name. It was undignified, the relief he felt when they called, when they assured him all was well and that they were fine and that the two of them would be together so, so soon.

On the nights they did not call he laid in bed and pondered what in the hell they wanted with him, and furthermore, what the hell he wanted with them. But then, he knew the answer to the latter question, knew that they were sharp and brilliant and talented, that the angles of their face were etched into his memory, inspired him more than any artist’s muse could’ve dreamed of. He loved them. It didn’t make sense on paper, but it didn’t make it untrue.

Even if they hadn’t instructed him to close his workshop, he would’ve had to anyway. His swirling distraction made his work shoddy. Most of his remaining clients couldn’t really tell, except that he was taking longer to complete restorations than he had prior. However, at one point he used the wrong solvent cleaning a late 19th century portrait, obliterating the face of someone’s wealthy ancestor. He swore and painstakingly tried to recreate it with conservators’ paints, putting a face back that was almost who he’d ruined, but not quite. His client had stared at it a long time, a period during which Gabriel’s stomach had crawled up into the vicinity of his voice box. The client had finally nodded, though wasn’t entirely pleased. The final fee was renegotiated and Gabriel didn’t fight it. It didn’t matter anymore.

Just before the three month mark, the point when Beelzebub had promised they’d send for him, they called. Immediately he could tell they were unhappy.

“I don’t have a lot of time tonight.”

He held the phone to his ear at his kitchen table, his forehead resting in his hand. “What’s happened?”

They sighed. “It’s going to be a bit longer, my darling. Just wrapping up a few loose threads on my end.”

“How much longer?” he asked in plain desperation. 

“Just a few more weeks.” In their response, he could hear their satisfaction. They loved that he needed them.

In the end, it was four months after Paris. An entire season passed and then some. Without advance warning, a plane ticket appeared in his e-mail, London-Heathrow to Geneva. First Class. Scheduled to take off in one week.

In an echo of the lead up to their last meeting, he tried to talk himself out of going. He tried to access the part of himself that had once been pragmatic and principled. The fixer. The investigator. The detective. For seven days he failed. He didn’t know why he tried so hard to resist.

He packed up every vestige of his life that was worth taking with him in two suitcases. Clothes, some books. He packed the paintings he’d done of Beelzebub, though he couldn’t ever imagine sharing them, revealing how far he’d been gone and how early. But then, he thought, as he folded a sweater on top of one of the portraits, obscuring it from view, they’d known for so much longer than he had, anyway.

He accepted a newspaper on the plane but did not read it. Instead he looked out the window, gaze soft, and pictured what his life from today onwards would look like. Gabriel knew nothing except that Beelzebub had a home in Switzerland. He did not know what the pattern of their days looked like, or what they would expect from him. The Channel rushed under the plane beneath him.

Evening fell and the view from the plane faded. He touched ground in Geneva, not actually knowing what to do next. Would they meet him there at the airport? He couldn’t imagine them there, eight months along, looking like an entirely different person. He could hardly imagine Beelzebub waiting for anyone, ever.

With his luggage he moved through customs, out into the arrivals lounge. He felt the most alert he had in ages, trying to solve the puzzle of what he should do next. He’d been there less than a minute when a young man dressed in all black approached him. Dark hair, dark eyes. Handsome, friendly smile.

“Detective Bote,” he said affably, and extended a hand.

Gabriel stared at it a moment, then for lack of knowing what else to do, took it in his. Shook it. “Not, uh… Gabriel is fine. Are you…” He wasn’t sure what question he wanted to ask.

“Erik,” the young man said, laying his hand flat on his chest for a moment. “I work for Prince. Here, let me help you with that.”

Erik had Gabriel’s suitcases in hand and began walking towards a sign that indicated a parking garage before Gabriel could respond. There was no choice but to follow, Gabriel feeling he had received all the information he was going to get at this particular juncture. He watched the back of Erik’s head as he strode confidently through the crowds and the parking garage to a dark SUV with tinted windows. Erik loaded the suitcases into the back, brushing Gabriel off when he tried to help.

Gabriel felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he examined the vehicle. If he got in this car he would have no idea where he was going, no idea what was on the other end. It could be anything. He could get out at an undisclosed location with the barrel of a gun pointed at his temple.

“Can I ask where we’re going?” he said as Erik came around the back.

The younger man smiled, and opened the door to the backseat, gesturing for Gabriel to get in. Gabriel looked at him, breath coming to a stop, waiting. 

Erik chuckled. “To Prince, Detective. You’ll see.”

Gabriel looked into the backseat, then back to Erik. He’d come too far. He climbed in.

They drove for two hours and the towns they passed became shrouded in nightfall. Erik asked Gabriel how his flight was, if he’d been to Switzerland before, asked if he was hungry, wanted to stop for something to eat. He was professional, chipper. Gabriel had no idea what to make of him, but he responded with one word answers, and advised Erik not to stop.

They drove through a pretty little town that looked like it should be on a postcard, and from there, drove into what could only be countryside, as the whole world around them faded to black. The SUV began up an incline. Trees lined the side of the road creating a thick and unrelenting darkness.

Gabriel swallowed in the backseat. He said nothing to Erik, and the driver responded in kind.

Finally, the SUV rolled to a stop, and Gabriel could hear gates being opened. The car moved forward again, up a long drive, until he could see the front door to a house. He knew instinctively the house was so much larger than the headlights of the car revealed. Erik put the car in park, and began to unload Gabriel’s suitcases.

Gabriel alighted, trying in vain to see the world he now stood in, but there were no lights on the grounds beyond the single light by the front door. He looked back and couldn’t see the road, suspected they’d driven far enough off it that even in daylight it would be obscured from view. The last sign for a town he could remember passing under had been Châtel-Saint-Denis, but that had been at least half an hour prior. He had no idea where Erik had taken him. Where he had let himself be taken.

His chest tightened as he watched Erik take his suitcases up to the front door, and enter the house. Erik did not turn around to cajole Gabriel into following him, perhaps recognizing that he needed a moment.

It hadn’t hit him all at once, this monumental decision, this abandonment of his former life. It came in fits and starts. Each phone call he accepted, selling his workshop equipment, packing the suitcases, getting on the plane. When he walked through that door, he’d be done. He would have made all the choices he had to make. His transformation would be complete.

The gravel crunched under his feet as he walked forward, shifting under the soles of his shoes. The tightness in his chest twisted, and Gabriel felt like he was collapsing in on himself. By the time he reached the threshold his anxiety was dancing on the edge of panic. 

Erik eyed him with concern. “I’ll leave these here for now,” he said steadily, gesturing to the suitcases in the foyer. “They’ll be with you in a minute, alright?”

Gabriel nodded, reached behind himself to close the door.

“It was a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to getting to know one another.”

When Gabriel looked up again Erik had disappeared, gone through some doorway, or down the hall. In the silence, Gabriel took in the space around him. Tiled floors, white walls, high beamed ceilings. A modern take on the traditional chalet. On the wall in front of him was a contemporary piece, abstract with violent, wide brushstrokes. It wasn’t familiar, but then he’d not been up to date with the current art scene in some time. 

The stairs in front of him opened to a landing with a large window that opened out onto… something. He couldn’t tell in the absence of light. In the morning, he’d be able to see what he anticipated was a spectacular vista of which he hadn’t dared imagine. 

There was no scent to the place, not an item out of place. He’d thought they’d be messy. He’d been in one of their studios a decade ago, when their name had first started appearing in investigations, and it had been dank and dusty, crammed with found objects and barely usable art supplies. There’d been hardly any space to walk through. He’d seen them perched on a stool in front of an easel, haughty and unimpressed with his questions. Young then, but just as bold as they’ve ever been.

His memory was interrupted as Beelzebub appeared from around a corner. Their footsteps made no noise. All the air rushed out of him as their bright eyes met his, and he saw how their features were softer now, and their form, unmistakably altered. No well cut coat could conceal how they’d changed in the four months since he’d seen them last, and as if acknowledging that, they clearly hadn’t aimed to hide it. The silk robe they wore, an inky black, draped over their body and hugged it at the same time. One of his worries - that there was no child at all - was put to rest. Beelzebub almost smiled, but not quite. 

“Beelzebub,” he said.

They exhaled. “Take off your jacket. Stay.”

When he didn’t move, they came to him, slowly. When they began to take off his coat, it was with practiced, gentle hands, each button sliding through its hole like a hot knife through butter. They brushed against him as they slid the jacket off his shoulders and it was an effort to keep himself from collapsing into them. Instead, he placed a broad hand over the swell of their stomach. Beelzebub turned their face upwards, and laid a small hand on his.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

They hummed contentedly. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

He felt their breathing under his hand. He wanted to fall to his knees in front of them, press his face to their chest, and hold them.

“Ah, hm,” he started. The questions he was going to ask began to feel so small. “How are you? How are you feeling, I mean.”

“I’m fine. Baby’s fine too.”

“Oh,” he murmured.

“Your baby.”

The twisting grip in his chest unraveled all at once and the resulting groan that escaped him edged into a sob. “God,” he said, a stunted prayer as his second hand came to rest beside the first. He’d known he was a ruin but had never known what it would feel like to entirely come apart. Had anyone ever been so efficiently unmade, entirely disassembled him, the way that Beelzebub Prince had? It seemed impossible.

With no ceremony, they dropped his coat to the floor. “Come here, my darling,” they cooed, and they drew his head down towards them, settling it on their shoulder. They then laid both their hands over his. They stroked his knuckles, scratched lightly at his wrists as he breathed them in, took in their scent.

As their dry lips brushed over his forehead, he cleared his throat, tried to find his way back to earth. He felt on unsteady ground now, but he wasn't steady, maybe would never be. To touch them like this was the closest to earth that he’d get.

“I’m, ah, I’m sorry,” he said into their neck. “I’m a mess.”

They clicked their tongue, squeezed his hands. “Shh, you’re just tired, is all.” They encouraged him to lift his head, to look right into their startling and serious eyes. “Come with me.”

They hooked their fingers under his and pulled him towards the stairs. Gabriel turned back to where Erik had dropped his suitcases. Beelzebub interrupted his thought before he could even open his mouth. “Someone else will get those.”

Someone else. He wondered how many other people were in this house. Employees? Colleagues? Erik had disappeared somewhere within its depths, had clearly not left.  _ Someone else _ indicated there was more than just Erik here.

Beelzebub began to slowly climb the staircase, taking their hands away from him, one gripped to the banister, the other gathering their robe in front of them to avoid tripping. He noticed their small, bare feet, fine boned, a delicate part of them.

Abruptly, a few steps ahead of him, they stopped and looked back, brow furrowed. From this vantage point they were taller than him, looking down. Something about it felt right, like he should always be looking up.

“Are you hungry?”

“What?” Gabriel asked, before the three words finally came together in his mind to form a whole.

“Did you eat? I can have Carolina make you something.”

“Caro-” he started, then stopped. Another person. Erik. Carolina. How much money did Beelzebub have? This seemed so far outside of forger territory. He banished the thought as soon as it rose up in him. It didn’t matter anymore. “No, I’m not hungry.” He hadn’t been hungry for months.

Beelzebub looked genuinely concerned. They reached out and took his chin in their hand, turned his face this way, and that, studying his features. 

“Are you sure?” they asked. He knew they were looking at his sunken cheeks, had picked up on the fact that he’d lost weight.

“Yes,” he replied.

The hold on his chin softened, and they shifted it to stroke his cheek then brush his hair off his forehead. “Will you tell me, Gabriel, if you change your mind?”

Their touch was the only thing he could think of. He was unmoored entirely but for that one point of contact. “I’ll tell you.”

“Promise me,” they demanded, quiet but as fierce as he’d ever seen them.

He caught their wrist with his hand and kissed their palm. He closed his eyes at the sensation, at the knowledge that he could do this now, and always. “I promise.”

They smiled at him, a quiet, small thing. Satisfied, they continued on their way. 

The bedroom was spacious, a king-sized bed with dark grey sheets against the far wall. At its end was a quilt that looked handmade. It was incongruous with Beelzebub’s other things. Too folksy, too soft. He couldn’t imagine where it had come from. The far wall was all windows that opened out onto the night. A small bud of eagerness grew in him to see what scene would reveal itself outside when the morning came.

The possibilities of this new life were limited, but there were so many unknowns, and the small rolling out of each new circumstance would make each day a kind of surprise, or, if he felt like being precious about it, a gift. 

The first gift would be the landscape that awaited him when the sun rose. But then, turning to face the bed, he corrected himself. The first would, in fact, be to know what it felt like to sleep next to Beelzebub, something he’d never done. 

He couldn’t tell himself that the bed belonged to the both of them now, that the out-of-place quilt was not just Beelzebub’s, but his as well. Everything in this home belonged to Beelzebub alone, and that included him. But it would be enough now, to be close. To live in their orbit, to know them in ways he never could have before. 

They laid their hand on his arm and he startled, having gotten lost in his thoughts. “Darling, if this is… if you need it, I had Carolina make up the guest bed. You could sleep there if-”

“No.” He cut them off, the strength of his own resolve catching him off guard. He deflated slightly, as if he had used all his energy on that one word. “No. Not that.”

Their knowing smile suggested that was the answer they’d expected. Perhaps, they just wanted to hear him say it.

“Sit down,” they said, and nudged him towards the bed. He sat and they stood between his legs. Without speaking they pulled his sweater over his head and started on the buttons at the collar of his shirt. Heat radiated off of them. When the backs of their knuckles brushed against the skin of his throat his heartbeat quickened. Where his hands rested on his knees he gripped his trousers. But he no longer had to hold back. This was his life now, for as long as Beelzebub kept him. He could touch them. They probably _ wanted _ him to touch them.

He reached out and undid the belt of their robe. They looked quietly pleased as they shrugged the robe off their shoulders and let it fall to the floor. They were left in a dark tank top and underwear, legs bare and white. His breath left him again. Would it always be like this, he wondered, a beautiful shock? He’d barely eaten for months but now everything about them made him hungry.

They placed their hand on his shoulder, and turned to lower themself down onto his thigh, perching there, looking directly into his face.

“Bit heavier than you remember, I suspect,” they said, wrinkling their nose and smiling.

“Not really,” he breathed out, barely audible. They didn’t feel heavy, or maybe he just felt so light that it was impossible to know any different. He put one hand on their lower back to steady them, and the other hovered in the air a moment, before coming down on their stomach. 

He moaned, feeling overwhelmed again, a sensation he felt he should probably get used to, but knew he wouldn’t. He swallowed air. He was going to cry again. It was written all over him. 

“Shh, Gabriel. You’re alright. I’m here now.” Beelzebub kissed him and he whimpered into it. He was a wreck, a mess of a man, but when he felt their smile on his lips he knew that this had been part of it for Beelzebub, to see him reduced, for him to collapse at their feet and beg for them to save him. They parted his lips with their tongue and the moans that tumbled out of both of them tangled together. It was unrushed, and syrup sweet. Their arms looped around his neck, the hand on their back slid around to their hip and his fingertips sunk into their flesh as he tried to pull them impossibly closer.

Beelzebub made a low noise of surprise and pulled back from him. Before Gabriel had time to react they pulled his hand down their side, and held it in place. Their eyes came back to his, wide and thrilled. “Feel that?”

And then he did. A kick. Or a push. A hearty shove that almost made him laugh at the gentle strength of it. “Yes.”

They were as intense and as earnest as he’d ever seen them. “We made that together, Gabriel,” they said, their hand tight on his. “That’s ours.”

In his life, he had been a person who had fixed things. Beelzebub had broken them. Neither of them were makers, or he hadn’t thought he was. Now, it was undeniably, with Beelzebub in his lap, their child moving under his hand. They made and together they were real. Without them he did not exist.

He slept curled around their back. In the dark, before he had given into sleep they’d spoken to him. “If you need anything, anything at all tonight, you will wake me up."

When he didn’t respond they said his name, sharp and deep, a verbal cue pulling him closer, prompting his “Yes.”

They softened. "Sleep, darling."

He woke up hours later, at an unknown time, the room dark and completely silent but for their shared breathing. He was hard against them and he tried to shift away. They woke up immediately.

“Gabriel…” Beelzebub muttered, groping behind them in the dark.

“I’m here,” he said, as if Beelzebub was the one who needed reassurance.

“Tell me what you need.” It was like they’d never been asleep at all, their directive clear and awake.

"Nothing."

"Don't lie to me," Beelzebub murmured as they angled back against his erection.

His breath caught as he felt them reach down, slide their underwear down their hips.

“I know what you need.”

He cursed softly as they positioned themself, bringing his length to their slit to slide against it.

“I need it too. I missed you. Please, Detective.”

He pushed inside them, and moaned, open, wet, and ruined.

Out of sight, Beelzebub smiled in a way they’d never smiled, not once in their horrible life. He filled them, and they soared.


	5. Chapter 5

**New York City, 2004**

Beelzebub hated these things. A room thick with yuppies who were just as interested in the champagne and hors d'oeuvres as they were the art they’d supposedly come to see, and who were really most interested in being seen by other people who were also there to be seen. In spite of standing in the midst of it, Beelzebub always felt distinctly outside of this fray. It also didn’t help that said yuppies kept walking past their pieces, and barely turned their heads to look.

When Beelzebub was feeling objective, which wasn’t often, they could admit that it was because their stuff was provocative, and occasionally (frequently) obscene. More than one gallery owner had diplomatically described it as “not commercially viable.” But Beelzebub could do  _ commercial _ . Since they’d been a kid they’d been riffing off the techniques of masters, making half-baked copies of Van Gogh’s sunflowers for friends or selling them on the sidewalk on an unsupervised Saturday afternoon. It only took them a few hours to produce something inoffensive you’d find in a highway hotel room or the front of a note card. But commercial didn’t interest them. It wasn’t who Beelzebub was. 

No galleries wanted Beelzebub’s grotesque, deliberately unsettling paintings. But no one ever expected the five-foot-nothing, eighteen-year-old English androgyne to keep showing up, to keep insisting that their work was brilliant, and more than that, important. Their brand of stubborn and in-your-face perseverance that had driven their parents and school teachers mad was what had finally gotten four of their paintings up on the wall here. The only reason it was up was the gallery owner got sick of them hanging around, but their pieces were being seen, and that was all that mattered.

They’d dragged their friends along to the opening night, the ones who skulked in corners, alienating the classier, more established crowd. The people Beelzebub had fallen in with since coming to America were sculptors and dealers, performance artists with some sort of half-baked criminal enterprise on the side. Beelzebub had latched on to them for dear life, wanting desperately to shed their monied upbringing and the vestiges of the upper class lifestyle that marked them as the worst thing an artist could be, inauthentic. Hanging around the creeps and weirdos who lived in half abandoned buildings and willingly shed their own blood for artistic purposes lent Beelzebub a credibility they’d never had in England,  _ could _ never have there.

Dagon was already drunk, having had four glasses of the champagne. The servers were giving her an obvious berth, but she somehow always had a glass in her hand. She slung her long, heavily tattooed arm around Beelzebub’s neck, and hissed in their ear. “You’ve got a couple of lookie-loos over at  _ Open Wide _ .” 

Beelzebub craned their neck to look around at their largest painting, and the couple standing in front of it. White, well dressed. Tall. Beelzebub sniffed.

“What d’you wanna bet their names’re like… Brittany? And Chad. They live in Connecticut and came into the big city for’a night out. Kiddies with a babysitter who they pay $2 an hour.” Dagon’s disdain for anyone they deemed ‘fake’ was unmatchable and Beelzebub envied the strength of it. “Y’should go talk to them. Try to sell’em your painting.”

Beelzebub chuckled darkly. “They’re not gunna buy my fucking painting.”

Dagon pulled them closer. Her champagne sloshed over the rim of her glass. “But won’t it be fucking funny to see them pretend to like it when you say you’re the artist.”

Beelzebub tried to pull back. Dagon was spitting on their face as she spoke.

“Get over there, Ziggy Stardust.” Shifting dangerously on unsteady feet, Dagon shoved Beelzebub in the couple’s direction. “Show’em what you’re made of.”

Beelzebub crossed their arms and turned away from Dagon, wandered closer to the painting, weaving around strangers talking with more popular,  _ commercial _ , artists. They’d expected the couple to move on by the time they crossed the room, but the pair had lingered, or the man had. The woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, played with an earring, and looked away from Beelzebub’s painting.

From where Beelzebub stood, they couldn’t see the couples’ faces, but they could hear them, could hear him.

“... shocking, but in a way that exposes the viewer. You’re cowed into submission. The contrast brings your eyes right to the centre. You don’t have a choice. That pull, it’s a slap in the face. Cold water.”

“It’s… Gabriel. It’s gross.”

“That’s what you’d think if you don’t spend any time with it.”

“Why would you want to?”

“It’s an invitation.” The man’s hand came up. He held it still, open palmed in front of the canvas. For a moment Beelzebub thought he was going to touch it, but they were frozen in place at his words and couldn’t have stopped him if they tried.  _ An invitation. _ He didn’t touch the painting, merely held his hand in front as if warming it by a fire. 

He,  _ Gabriel _ , continued. “They’ve shocked you but only because they want it to be safe to let you in. They want your defenses down, for you to walk in with your hands up.”

“ _ That’s _ what you’re getting from… this?” The woman gestured dismissively at Beelzebub’s work and Beelzebub decided, right there, that they hated her. But him…

“It’s inelegant, but, the intent, the heart of it is so clear. They’re asking for you to surrender. They are willing to offer themselves, what they’re made of, but only if there’s complete surrender.”

“It’s disgusting.”

He turned then, sharp and angry. They saw his profile for the first time. The long nose, and his eyes. A blue so rich it was almost violet. The effect was like being caught in an explosion, flung back in slow motion, flames licking at their skin, that would leave burns that would turn into scars, break bones that would never quite heal. A traumatic event that would leave them completely, permanently altered.

“It’s remarkable.”

There was a breath between his assessment and the woman shrugging in response, but in that breath, in that moment, Beelzebub felt like some kind of specimen. Like they were dissected on a lab bench, their whole torso opened up and he had peered in, seen inside them, moved around their organs. In one foul swoop this Gabriel had diagnosed them with everything they were sick with. And he had called it  _ remarkable _ .

He had seen them. He had seen what they were trying to do even if they couldn’t have said it.

“It’s not for me,” said the woman, continuing on.

Gabriel lingered for a moment and Beelzebub studied the back of his neck as he studied their work. They memorized the outline of him, mouthed his name. In their chest their heart was splitting open, and searching. They itched to embrace him from behind, press their nose to his straight spine and never, ever let go.

And then he turned to them, and he looked right through them. His eyes were on theirs but he did not register that they were even there. Gabriel moved past them, and followed the woman Beelzebub hated. 

They could have sunk into the floor at that moment, let the mouth of hell open up and swallow them whole. Gabriel had looked at  _ Open Wide _ and known what Beelzebub was trying to do, more than maybe they had themself. Or, at the very least, more than they could’ve put into words. He had seen them on that canvas more clearly than anyone else ever had, but then their body had been in front of him and they had been invisible.

In their raw and reddened state, they watched him move around the room. He did not spend much time in front of any other painting, none as long as he’d stood in front of Beelzebub’s.

“Didn’t think old married guys were your type.” 

Ligur materialized from nowhere, sniffing as if he’d just done a line in the washroom, which he almost certainly had. He looked terminally bored with the proceedings, and would insist on leaving soon for something more interesting. 

“D’you know him?” Beelzebub asked, not bothering to refute Ligur’s jab. They knew they’d been staring after Gabriel for a half hour. Plus, Ligur seemed to know everyone, a walking black book of the art world and its hangers-on. A veritable encyclopedia of who was screwing who and who actually had money and who was willing to share what they had.

“Gabriel Bote? Yeah, he’s a fucking cop.” 

Beelzebub turned and looked up at their friend, whose mouth was curved into a smirk. “What?”

“Not like, a street cop. I think he works for the FBI. Fraud stuff.” Ligur huffed out a humourless laugh. “Helping rich people keep their money when they’ve been too stupid to do their homework and protect their investments.”

“Like, forgeries or whatever?” Somewhere inside of Beelzebub, a candle they did not know existed was lit.

“Yeah. Black market. Anyway, he’s a fucking narc.” Ligur stood in front of Beelzebub, breaking their line of sight. “What, you think he’s cute or something?”

“No,” Beelzebub spat, lip curling. 

_ I think he’s perfect _ , they thought, and the need that flooded into them knocked over the newly lit candle and set their heart ablaze.

“You’re so fucking weird,” said Ligur, linking his arm with theirs and pulling them towards the rest of the crew. “Let’s leave. These people make me want to die.”

Beelzebub looked back over their shoulder, back at Gabriel Bote. For a split second, his head turned, and their eyes met. Beelzebub was on fire, and it seemed impossible that he could not feel it from where he stood.

* * *

“Lexie! Don’t run, please.”

Alexandre ignored his father and continued to run down the hallway. He was testing boundaries these days, and Beelzebub suspected he wouldn’t learn his lesson until he tripped over one of the rugs and knocked a tooth out.

“Alexandre,” said Beelzebub, sharp and firm. The boy stopped immediately, looked over his shoulder, eyes wide. Beelzebub tried not to smile. He was so much less likely to test boundaries with them than Gabriel. “What did your father just tell you?”

Alexandre sighed, tipped his head back. He was the image of Beelzebub in every way except his height, from which he’d unmistakably gotten from Gabriel. “Not to run,” the six-year-old grumbled.

“So don’t,” replied Beelzebub.

With that, Alexandre took up a more reasonable pace, and trundled towards the bedroom. 

_ Thank you _ , Gabriel mouthed. Beelzebub nodded. He was terribly soft on the children, which wasn’t all bad, really. They weren’t undisciplined, just a touch spoiled. He was so deeply protective it took Beelzebub three years to convince him to take a trip away, to leave the children behind. Even then it had been a compromise. Alexandre and Mathilde came with them, along with the nanny. Beelzebub had coaxed an incredibly anxious Gabriel into a separate excursion for two nights, confiscated his cell phone so he couldn’t check in every thirty minutes.

It worked out in the end. They had Lena nine months later.

Lena who was asleep with her head on Gabriel’s shoulder, her small arms limp at her sides. She’d fallen asleep in the car an hour before they’d gotten home. She’d always been a good sleeper. Not like Mathilde who ended up in Beelzebub and Gabriel’s bed at least twice a week.

“I’ll get them to bed,” Gabriel said, pulling Beelzebub out of their reminiscing. He reached for Mathilde’s hand, still curled in Beelzebub’s. He was so quiet, barely spoke above a whisper. From day one he’d been so quiet with the children, so measured and solid. To them he seemed a rock, unmoving and unchanging as the sea stormed around him. With Beelzebub alone it had always been different. Panic attacks and nervous pacing, insecurity and catastrophizing. They chose not to examine their own role in the development of those traits too closely.

“Get Marta to help you,” Beelzebub said, pulling out their phone to text the nanny.

He shook his head. “I’ve got it. Let’s go, Tilda.”

Lexie. Tilda. Beelzebub wished he would call the children by their names, and told him that with some frequency, but he couldn’t help himself. As he walked down the hall his eyes flicked up to a painting on the wall, then away just as quickly. 

While the family had been away, Beelzebub had Erik rotate the paintings in the upstairs hall. They did this every four to six months, sometimes more often when they got sick of looking at a particular piece. But this time the rotation had been deliberate. They’d requested Erik retrieve this piece from offsite storage, bring it in. Now here it was, at the top of their stairs.

Beelzebub hadn’t seen it for almost two decades. They’d forgotten some of the details. They briefly worried that if one of the children got too close a look there’d be nightmares but they’d cross that bridge if they came to it.

The painting was still good. Still as angry as an open wound. Still too much for most people. Still one of many nails in the coffin of a mainstream career as an artist. But they’d found their way. It had all turned out. 

They laid their hand on the swell of their stomach, their fourth (and final) child with Gabriel due to make an appearance in three months’ time. Yes, things had turned out.

They stood there for almost forty minutes in almost silence, the occasional high pitched whine from one of the children and Gabriel’s low and gentle reprimand teasing the edge of Beelzebub’s consciousness. Finally, they heard the door to the childrens’ room close, and he was beside them again. He turned to face the painting, as they were.

“Who is this?” he asked. It was what he asked whenever they put up something new, something he hadn’t seen. But there was a waver in his voice now, an indication of some fuzzy memory struggling to make itself clear.

Beelzebub laid their head against his bicep, wrapped an arm around his waist. “You don’t know?” they asked, softly. 

“I feel like I know it.” He was crawling towards the answer.

“You do,” they encouraged. 

He looked down to them, and they looked up. His brow furrowed behind his glasses, but his mouth quirked up at the corner. After he had come to Beelzebub he’d been such a serious man. Smiles had been so rare, only dragged out of him with hours of careful attention and coaxing, like persuading a wild animal out of its hiding spot. Smiles came more readily now, for the children, for Beelzebub, but his face at rest held his lips in a tight, straight line. Beelzebub preferred it that way. They wanted the smiles to feel earned. They’d never been a fan of easy.

“Don’t you remember, my darling?” Their voice was as smooth as it ever got. They reached up to stroke his cheek and their heart skipped when he leaned into their palm. Even now, every small affection opened into some deep and insatiable hunger. They never had enough of him.

Gabriel looked back to the painting, to _ Open Wide _ , and they watched his features. It wasn’t two breaths before something shifted. His eyes widened, his mouth opened. His fingers tightened on their shoulder. “It’s yours.”

They stroked his chest. Under his sweater they could feel his heart begin to race as he counted the years between the time he first saw that painting, and now. He reached up and stilled their hand. “But we didn’t… we didn’t know each other then.”

Under their hands, he began to shake. “My love,” they whispered, holding him tight. “We’ve always known one another.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_seekwill).


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